Perfectly
by mauvemaven
Summary: Perfectly - A Sequel to Finally. It has been a year and a half for Starling City's It-Couple but it looks like they're in trouble with a big capital T.
1. Chapter 1 - Oliver

I've been sitting on this for the past three years but I've never really been satisfied with it. And then a lot of things happened in my life that left me depressed and unmoored, the culmination of which was my father's passing not even a month ago. That really put a damper on my writing. I never felt like I was in the right headspace to write with the humor I had planned to use in this trilogy. Add to that the more recent announcement that Arrow was ending after a shortened S8 and that EmBett wouldn't even be staying on for it… The long and short of it is that I was just in dire need of a pick me up so I willed myself to get back on this horse and re-write this monster. I am glad to announce that I have finally banged out three chapters non-stop (which you'll get throughout the day after I give each a spit-polish). I started Finally as a gift to myself and am now following it up with the sequel that has been sooooo long in coming. It's hard to believe that it has been a over 3 years since I posted Finally and I never did expect the tremendous response I got for it (which was also my first ever contribution to fan fiction). Thank you to all of you who are still here with me after all these years. I hope you like this! XOXO

* * *

The Starling City Stars were set to face their rivals, the Gotham City Knights in a game that was billed to be the greatest of the season openers of this year's Super Hockey League. The rematch was 18 months in the making as Gotham's perennial contenders failed to capitalize on its early success in the last regular season to make the play-offs for the first time in 20 years. Now, the two-time defending Champions face off with a never-before-as-hungry team as newly drafted rookie Ryan Hayes and returning legend Kevin McDonagh suit up for their first outing together for Gotham City's storied blade runners.

Oliver Jonas Queen was going to have to miss all that, because right now he was sitting alone in a darkened penthouse suite that he would've liked to call __theirs__ but couldn't.

_ _How was this his life? _ _

He sighed because he knew the answer.

He had been without Felicity for three months, 13 hours, 8 minutes and 5 seconds and it was because of him that everything had gone sideways.

_ Three Months Ago _

_They had just come back from the Annual Children's Charity Fund Gala and to say that all was not well between them was an understatement. He just had the two shittiest weeks of his life, ever, and that counted even those he'd spent on the island. _

_ He'd been back from Central City for a week now. A week. And Felicity had been – and still was – avoiding him. He didn't know why, really, but he felt like everything was slipping away. It was like trying to hold water in the palm of his hand. And then he got a call this afternoon – on the landline Felicity insisted they get for the loft. And then his whole world just began to collapse on him. And then add to add how nonchalantly she acted all throughout the evening. He was trying too hard not to lash out but he couldn't help himself. _

_ "Has the past eight months meant nothing to you?" he asked. Her ring had been burning a hole in his pocket, but the call he took that morning was throwing him for a loop. _

_ "What the hell are you talking about, Oliver?" Felicity asked with a note of irritation in her voice. _

_ He probably deserved that. He'd been an ass all evening. But he needed an explanation from her, too. So he pushed. "I took a call this afternoon. I didn't want to believe at first… I wasn't expecting it, I guess. But it's true isn't it?" he asked as he was met with Felicity's still confused frown. _

_ He was being overly cryptic and Felicity was getting more pissed by the minute. _

_ "Mike called. Remember Mike? Your former building super? He told me that renovations on A partment 6 had to be put on hold because of a ventilation issue. Guess what he told me when I asked him how any of it was your concern, being a former tenant?" Oliver asked as he stopped pacing and stared angrily at her. "He said that as far as he knew, you still owned the god-damned place!" He bellowed as angry tears built up in his eyes, not exactly caring as Felicity flinched at the volume of his voice. _

_ There it is. He said to himself as he saw understanding dawn on her face. _

_ "Oliver, it's… it's not –" Felicity said as she started towards him. _

_ "Don't!" He warned her with his index finger. There was no telling what he would do when he got his hands on her in his current state of mind. He didn't know if he wanted to shake her and show her just how betrayed he felt that she had kept this from him, kneel in front of her and beg her not to leave him or take her against the god-damned wall to claim her as his – only his. _

_ "Whatever it is you're thinking, please Oliver, it's not it. It's not the reason –" _

_ "Why you kept your apartment even after moving in with me, and didn't even bother to tell me about it?" _

_ "I'm so sorry, Oliver, I never meant –" _

_ "For me to find out?" He spat as he interrupted her yet again. He lashed out because he didn't want to hear her say that she was leaving him. He can't. _

_ "Aren't you even going to let me explain?" Felicity sighed as her heart recalled the pain and confusion she felt at his own betrayal. Tears began to cloud her eyes at his silence, but even then she demanded, "So, that's it? I don't even deserve the benefit of the doubt?" _

_ Felicity's outburst took the wind out of his anger. "Felicity…" he said as he realized that he had gone too far. _

_ "You don't get to Felicity me. You don't," Felicity snapped at him. It was her turn to be angry now. "I guess, I shouldn't have given you a pass then, when you lied to me, when you told me that you were on your way back to the hotel from our Central City offices when I saw you leaving a woman's house with my own eyes. Or when I decided to give you some space to process and some time before I asked you to explain to me why her kid happens to share half of his DNA with you," she said as she angrily advanced on him and poked her finger at his chest every time she wanted to drive home a point. _

_ Oliver was dumbfounded. His trip to Central City was anything but uneventful. He had a son – a son he didn't even know existed and his son's mother, Samantha wouldn't even let him see his kid unless he promised that no one – not his son, not Felicity – would ever know about it. He had begged – yes, begged – Samantha not to ask the impossible of him. But she had. _

_ And he chose to get to know his son. _

_ "You were in Central City?" he asked, his voice now barely above a whisper, as the gravity of their situation had dawned upon him. Everything was falling apart. _

_ "That– That's what you got from all that? Unbelievable," Felicity muttered as she shook her head. "You were always so convinced that I always had one foot out the door, Oliver. That may have been true once but if there was anything the past eight months have taught me, is that you're worth staying for, you're worth it. I want to show you just how much but I don't even stand a chance when you won't let me," she said as she stalked out of their apartment. _

Oliver sighed at the memory. She had left for Gotham shortly after that.

And he didn't even know if he could ever get her back.

* * *

Please feel free to let me know what you think. I think the muse is hungry for it, now that she let loose on me.


	2. Chapter 2 - Felicity

Chapter 2 - Felicity

* * *

Starling City Sentinel Online

The Scoop: Hook-Ups, Shake-Ups and Mix-Ups

By Angel Chen

Hello, Biatches! Guess who's headed for Splitsville?

There may be no bigger ship that floats Starling City's boat than Olicity, but it may be sinking. Rumor has it that the city's reigning Power Couple is ready to call it quits over the possibility of Starling City's resident Reformed-Rake Oliver Queen being supplanted from Cutie-Nerd-Princess Felicity Smoak's affections by another bazillionaire hottie.

The couple, who whipped the Starling City press into a right frenzy after their hot-kissing-on-the-street-affair was discovered last year, has never been seen together in the last three months (and counting). The recently re-installed CEO of Queen Inc., Oliver Queen, has also been giving the paps a wide berth, but numerous photos have just surfaced showing Ms. Smoak way over on the East Coast, arm-in-arm and hip-to-hip with none other than Gotham's Bad Boy Daddy Bruce Wayne.

Granted, these photos of Ms Smoak and the Gotham socialite were snapped during the Wayne Enterprises Expo, but insiders have been swearing up and down that there's more than just a little bit of chemistry between them than just being 'work' friends. The two were also allegedly seen getting down at the Palazzo and slumming it up at Gotham's newly-re-opened Big Belly Burger. Who knew Bruce Wayne was capable of holding on to a woman for more than a week? Good on you, Ms Smoak!

Neither Oliver Queen nor Felicity Smoak can be reached for comment, but sources close to the troubled couple have signified that they are indeed on the rocks. Yikes!

Let us know in the poll below whether you're still all in for #Olicity or are raring to see some more hot smolder from #SmoakinDaddy!

* * *

Felicity was in Gotham's most revered branch of Big Belly Burger with none other than Bruce Wayne himself. He had repeatedly berated her and his sons for eating the "unhealthy filth" from this place so it had been imperative to her to disabuse him of such a sacrilegious notion. But ever since she had come to Gotham, the opportunity had never quite presented itself – until now. He had lost a bet with her, hence him being caught dead in this fast food restaurant.

"I still can't believe that you're having Big Belly Burger for the first time ever," she teased as she tried to wrap her head around the seemingly unthinkable notion.

"Not my fault that I have a more refined palate," he deadpanned as the waitress brought him a Big Belly Buster, with pickles and fries on the side.

"Says the guy who powershakes everything," she quipped.

He leveled her with a baleful stare – or tried to. She shook her head and laughed, "Seriously, Alfred is wasted on you."

"Touché," he smirked – an almost boyish smirk that reminded her of Oliver. __Oliver.__

She sighed and tried to focus instead on her food lest the memories of the past three months come crashing down on her. But it couldn't be helped.

She had found __the ring__ a little over three months ago, in a decorative bowl no less, amid all the glass pebbles Oliver insisted looked well enough with the coffee table center piece. In her excitement, she'd gone to Central City to surprise him.

But she was the one who got surprised instead. He found him leaving a woman's house, a woman whom she would later find out was the mother of his child. And he didn't even clue her in. And then he had the gall to pick a fight with her for not letting go of her apartment, which, by the way, she only held on to, as subletting had become a source of some financial liquidity in the lean months when they all thought Oliver had perished.

She shook her head a little to clear it but was instead hit with a memory of a conversation she had with Bruce all those months ago.

_"___I've been to the place where all hope dies, Felicity," Bruce said. "I think you don't realize just how much it took for him to get to a place where he tries so hard to fight against himself to go and be with you in the best way he can."__

_"___So he should get a pass every time he does this?"__

_"___No, Felicity. I'm not saying he's not wrong. All I'm saying is that you should stop hiding, hear him out, and then decide whether you'd rather be happy than right.__

She'd dismissed it then, not just because she had still been too hurt to see, but also because her brain couldn't fathom taking relationship advice from Batman. But now, she realized that she might have been too hasty to discount all of it. She'd received Oliver's diary by special courier five days ago. It came with a handwritten note attached to it, with his familiar scrawl saying:

__Dear Felicity,__

__There are no excuses for what I've done – none. I know that. But there are explanations which I have failed to give you – not because I didn't want to or because I couldn't, but because I didn't know how to. And I hope that,____in my entrusting this to you, you'd understand____that I never meant to hurt you as much as I did, that I was wrong to do what I've done and that I will forever regret not trusting us more.__

__I ____am so sorry.__

__With All My Love,__

__Oliver__

And then she read his diary in full… and then re-read it… and then once more, again. And all that she'd gleaned was that the pain of his having been left out of his son's life for the past 8 years had not registered with her. Only the pain of his glaring distrust did. She had been so overwhelmed by her own hurt that she had walked away – from him, from them, from her life in Starling, only now to realize that she had also checked out on him when he had needed her the most. His world had exploded and she hadn't been there for him.

And then Roy's accident happened and all Oliver did during those times – those very trying times – was do the best he could to be there for her – braving her anger to bring her coffee, offering the comfort of his embrace when she had needed it and supporting her move to Gotham despite the fact that it left their relationship in limbo, because she had been adamant about her need to work on a joint project to give Roy a neurally-interfaced bionic arm.

And even then, he'd ask Alfred to leave a meal or two for her in the oven or the fridge, especially during the times he knew that she was too engrossed with work to cook anything for herself, or called her at times when she'd been so frustrated by the project that Bruce had resorted to calling him to get him to calm her down.

She looked down on her untouched burger. __God, she was such an idiot sometimes.__


	3. Chapter 3 - Bruce

Three chapters in one day?! Uh-huh. You're not dreaming.

* * *

Chapter 3 - Bruce

* * *

Gotham Gazette

WayneTech and Queen Inc. Announce New Joint Venture

By Martin Mayne

GOTHAM CITY - The two Tech Titans announced a new joint venture at the WE Expo, which sees both of their biotechnology and bio-engineering arms working together under the new banner, Helix Edge. The new subsidiary aims to revolutionize wearable technology by putting cognitive neural prosthetics at the forefront of the burgeoning field, through the seamless integration of cognitive neural input with biomechanics and regenerative medicine.

The launch party was attended by Wayne Industries Chairman Bruce Wayne, who was very optimistic with the direction his family's company is taking. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," he said.

Also at the party was Queen Inc.'s newly-minted CTO, Felicity Smoak, who is said to be personally involved in the development of several Helix Edge projects. When speaking about her involvement, she says, "It allows me to go back to my roots, allows me to help solve problems that impact everyday people and allows me and my colleagues to play around all day in a lab with lots of cool stuff."

Th premier Helix Edge product line starts off with a cord-stimulating spinal implant which can help paraplegics regain sensorimotor function in their limbs. Wayne Industries CEO Lucius Fox promises more to come, "There are definitely more products that we are interested in developing. The Re-Gen spinal implant is just the first of many coming before the close of this year."

The merger comes at the height of what's shaping up to be another successful year for the two companies, with WayneTech also launching its SpacePrime division and Queen Inc. establishing itself as the market leader in DNA data storage solutions.

* * *

Bruce was just about to take another huge bite from his surprisingly good burger when Felicity blurted something that made him look up at her.

"What have I done, Bruce?" she asked with a lost, almost teary look in her eyes. "What have I done?"

He lowered his burger then, regretting for a moment that he'd never be able to finish it now because he knew right then that he needed to do something more to end this stalemate she had with Oliver.

He had known about Oliver being the Starling City vigilante and had guessed at his Tech Support, but he had never really worked with them closely until a few months back, when a run-in with a still-vexingly-unknown criminal in Blüdhaven left his teen-aged son, Dick, and Felicity's ward, Roy in pretty bad shape. Dick sustained a life-threatening head injury, while Roy lost his arm to a poison-coated, nannite-laced blade. He had quickly airlifted both of them back to Gotham, and sent a helicopter to Starling City when Roy's next-of-kin was finally identified. That was when he met the woman who had the guts to implant sniffers on his underground network one long ago night, Felicity Smoak.

He never would have thought Oliver Queen would amount to anything, but seeing him with Felicity had done something to cure him of that notion. Rollie Pollie Olie, the kid he gave such a hard time when he was younger had grown up, so much so that when Bruce called Oliver that morning (at Felicity's request) to tell him that she was needed for a few more days to put the finishing touches on what would be Roy's prosthetic bionic arm, Bruce found it odd that the man had made him promise _again_ to take good care of Felicity – a promise which he'd already given all those months ago, when he had jokingly asked Oliver for permission to keep his girlfriend in Gotham. It did not register then that Oliver had taken him seriously, and it was only later that Bruce realized that he had unwittingly accepted Oliver's blessing to be with Felicity. Well, much as he really liked her, he didn't want it. He never wanted her that way, and even he, woeful as he was when it came to these things, knew that those two belonged together. He sighed. _This was why he didn't do relationships. _"You were hurt, Felicity. You reacted," he assured her.

But when that only threatened to make her cry all together, he immediately offered, "Should I have the jet prepped?"


	4. Chapter 4 - Oliver

Chapter 4 - Oliver

**Just Desserts: Starling City Edition**

**_Spotted: Oliver Queen without his Queen._** The Starling City native has been seen for the first time in a spell sporting a hot, maybe drunk, caveman look with his not-so-dead-and-still-yummy bestfriend Tommy Merlyn leaving Verdant Saturday night. Hopes are high that the handsome billionaire is newly single, now that his maybe-not-so-lobster girlfriend was seen with perennial arm-candy Bruce Wayne in tow. The future is looking bright, ladies!

* * *

Left with nothing better to do, Oliver went to bed, or tried to.

It was terribly hard for an insomniac to sleep - harder still when said insomniac was being plagued by memories he had shared with Felicity on the very bed he was trying to sleep on. It was one of her favorite places and she always made sure he knew it.

_"God, I love your bed," she had sighed._

_"Is that why you insist we come here whenever we can?"_

_"Yes," she had giggled when his forehead scrunched up in disbelief, "but don't worry, baby. It's because of you that I stay."_

There were many variations of that conversation. Loving snippets that were testament to their relationship. Perhaps the most sacred, and now the most painful, was the exchange that made him finally decide to bite the bullet and get a ring.

_"Felicity, wake up. Come on! It's nearly l_ _unch."_

_"Five more minutes…" She had groaned as burrowed deeper into the bed._

_"You really do love my bed!"_

_"I'd marry your bed, if I can."_

_"Why don't you marry me instead? That way you get me… and the bed."_

_"Sounds good."_

_"Felicity, did you just agree to marry me?"_

_"Hmmmm…" she had murmured as she turned onto her belly and proceeded to snore._

That truly felt like forever ago. Their conversations after their fight, especially in the aftermath of Roy's unfortunate accident, were at their worst composed of mere syllables, and at best, were unfailingly stilted.

She hadn't even been gone a full hour since their shouting match, when she came rushing back to their apartment. He had thought that she had cooled off, but she had come back more distraught than when she left.

_"What's going on Felicity?" he had asked for the second time._

_Felicity jolted, as if she had just heard him the first time around. "It's Roy," she said, with a slight quiver of her lips._

She had haltingly relayed that a nurse from Gotham Medical Center had contacted her as she was listed as Roy's next-of-kin. She didn't understand what Roy was doing in Gotham but the lady had said that he was in critical condition.

He had helped her pack a bag that night and had been about to call Digg to get the chopper when security said that a helicopter was already waiting for her at their building's landing pad.

He hadn't known what to do with himself but Felicity had such a death grip on him, that he had gone with her, rumpled tux and all. She was in shock and was cut off from the rest of the world during what to him had been the longest helicopter ride of his life.

He didn't expect his childhood nemesis Bruce Wayne to meet them at the Gotham hospital's private wing. But there he was. He remembered thinking how uncannily small the world really was. The Arrow meeting The Batman in the most unexpected and unfortunate circumstances. Oh, he had known that Bruce Wayne donned a mask. It had been yet another thing Felicity didn't let him forget after a particular run-in one long ago night.

Bruce had told them what little he knew about the murky details surrounding the attack that left his eldest son in a coma and Roy in critical condition. He had then apologized for the fact that he unilaterally decided to airlift both of them to Gotham, which he said had better medical resources than Blüdhaven. Felicity thanked him for his quick action before Roy's doctors approached her.

Roy had been in a bad place. He had lost a lot of blood and the wound on his arm was so deep, and had already began showing signs of infection, that they had to amputate it as soon as possible to give him a fighting chance. Felicity had quickly consented to the procedure citing that there wasn't any choice to make and had borne the brunt of that decision as best she can in the aftermath.

Waiting with her during the surgery had been one of the hardest things he'd had to do. He had felt powerless then. There was nothing he could have done to protect Roy, so he had decided to just stay with Felicity all throughout that night, and then all throughout Roy's protracted hospital recovery, bringing her coffee, a change of clothes, food. It wasn't until Roy woke up that she finally broke down and cried endlessly in his arms.

That was probably the last time he had held her before they had fallen into this rut that he had no idea how to break. It was pure desperation on his part that he had sent her the journal that held his most private thoughts in an effort to make her understand.

She was coming back in a few days, later than originally planned, but he still didn't know where they really stood.

And that made him anxious enough to give up all together on sleeping.

So, he got up to change and opted to catch the hockey game instead. Or better yet, get Tommy to catch the second half of the game with him, having had woefully unused season tickets for two all this time.

Maybe then, he'll find something else to bother himself with, before his whole world starts crashing down on him.

Again.


End file.
